It’s no secret that the first-person shooter world generally is a boy’s membership. The viewers for the style tends to skew overwhelmingly male, and there are a variety of potential causes for that — harassment in on-line areas, aggressively violent content material, or the truth that gun nerds additionally are typically male. However in different methods, it’s additionally a self-fulfilling prophecy. The notion is that shooters are for boys, and plenty of video games are inclined to play to that perceived viewers by turning machismo into advertising. Possibly it’s not that girls aren’t naturally drawn to shooters as a result of they do not just like the style: Possibly it’s as a result of so most of the video games themselves are constructed to exclude them.
Don’t Cease, Girlypop! is right here to check that speculation by blowing a gap within the style’s chest. The debut recreation from Australian developer Humorous Fintan Softworks is the sort of first-person shooter you’d anticipate to see from a writer like, say, Devolver Digital. It’s a hyper-fast, monster-splatting romp with numerous mechanical similarities to Doom. And it additionally trades in grim vistas for a brilliant pink Y2K aesthetic, and the heavy steel soundtrack has been changed by pure uncut bubblegum pop. Hell yeah, sister.
In flipping style conventions on their head, Don’t Cease, Girlypop! asks us to query why a shooter with a “female” aesthetic ought to really feel like a novelty in 2026. It performs in addition to its style friends, with the very same highs and lows as so many shooters prefer it. So why does a pink paint job nonetheless really feel radical when it ought to be unusual?
Don’t Cease, Girlypop! places you in command of Imber, a form of magical fairy tasked with taking down an evil mining company’s doubtlessly world-ending operation. Armed with a shotgun and a bejeweled flip telephone, Imber should blast her method by means of linear ranges and defeat evil robots with the facility of affection — and by that I imply shoot them with weapons. Don’t Cease, Girlypop! performs costume up with style tropes, getting playful with the phrases used to explain your actions and the gadgets you utilize to do them, but it surely’s no totally different from Doom once you strip all that again. You filter out waves of enemies in arenas by taking pictures them with weapons. And, now and again, you even decide up coloured keycards to open doorways.
That core expertise is pretty according to different indie first-person boomer shooters. Simply as it’s in Ultrakill or Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, the primary hour of play is a chaotic pleasure specifically. You’re dropped proper into the motion with a shotgun and loads of weak drones to make use of as goal observe. They blow up in a fountain of superb particles that make it really feel extra such as you’re holding a magic wand than a shotgun. (You really do get a magic wand too, which lets you decide up containers and barrels and hearth them at enemies.) Girlypop solely emphasizes that sturdy visible suggestions with a UI eruption. Your lock-on reticle is a huge coronary heart. Sparkles and hearts refill the display as an alternative of fireplace and explosions. It’s so additional that it’s borderline illegible at occasions, however that’s the enjoyable of it as a thought experiment. If we worth visible extra in a recreation like Doom: Everlasting, why shouldn’t Girlypop explode in brilliant colours like a Lisa Frank poster? Both they’re each cool or they’re each obnoxious.
With every degree, the motion will get one other wrinkle that turns up the chaos dial much more. The shotgun’s secondary assault shoots out a floating bubble that launches projectiles you shoot at it. An SMG covers enemies in brilliant pink bubbles — which, naturally, explode once you shoot at them. Girlypop riffs on snipers, rocket launchers, and extra, all of which have been cleverly reimagined to really feel at dwelling inside its exuberant imaginative and prescient. Weapons, in addition to your arms, can be personalized with colourful textures and stickers like a ‘90s trapper keeper.
All of this unfolds at 300 miles per hour; Girlypop is momentum-based in each sense of the phrase. The quicker Imber strikes, the extra injury she will be able to deal and the faster she will be able to heal herself. Gamers can improve her high velocity by grappling, hopping, and executing a three-button motion cycle that chains jumps and dashes collectively. When these difficult nuances are executed with finesse, firefights fly by in a single gloriously hectic instantaneous. It’s a high-skill sort of shooter that rewards the twitchiest of fingers. (It’s a disgrace that Girlypop’s accessibility suite feels a bit missing, contemplating that it’s geared in the direction of an viewers that has been traditionally underserved by an unwelcoming style.)
Why achieve this few shooters look and sound like this when it’s all so rattling enjoyable?
After the highs of its exhilarating opening hour die down, Girlypop hits an adrenaline plateau the identical method a lot of its friends do. Longer, late-game shootouts can get tedious, particularly because the crowded UI makes it onerous to inform when Imber is low on well being. Platforming sections grind the momentum to a halt simply as they have an inclination to in Doom: Everlasting. It finds sufficient methods to iterate on its core mechanics (one mission pays homage to Steel: Hellsinger’s rhythm taking pictures, as an illustration), however no gimmick beats the easy early-game joys of blasting rooms filled with weaklings. It’s par for the course so far as speedy shooters go.
And but, Girlypop nonetheless feels radical. The primary time I booted it up, I felt like I had been welcomed into the world’s coolest secret clubhouse. The display lit up with assured shades of pink, colours that you just solely have a tendency to search out in a shooter within the type of an ironic gun pores and skin. The Y2K really feel made drained style concepts energetic once more; codex calls simply really feel totally different once you’re getting them by way of a flip telephone. I couldn’t cease bopping my head to a soundtrack filled with brilliant and bouncy pop tunes that inspired me to maintain my physique shifting like a exercise teacher. It’s an unapologetic explosion of female vitality that reimagines the language of a complete style. Why achieve this few shooters look and sound like this when it’s all so rattling enjoyable?
Possibly it’s the in-game Tamagotchi speaking, however a formative ‘90s reminiscence resurfaced whereas I used to be taking part in Girlypop. I used to be a pre-teen boy when The Powerpuff Women first started airing on Cartoon Community in 1998. On the time, it was one in all a handful of subversive exhibits arriving within the age of Woman Energy. It starred a trio of younger heroines who cherished fairly clothes as a lot as pummeling evil monkeys, and it didn’t deal with that idea as a automobile for irony. As an alternative, it proudly posited that, sure, girly ladies might kick ass too. Duh.
Picture: Humorous Fintan Softworks/Kwalee
The matter-of-fact supply of its premise was highly effective. It rapidly grew to become my favourite cartoon, whilst social stress tried to persuade me that it wasn’t for boys — I even had my very own Bubbles doll that slept beside me each evening. It was the primary time I keep in mind questioning gender dynamics: Who bought to resolve what exhibits have been for boys and what exhibits have been for ladies anyway? Many years later, Girlypop reopens that query for an trade that also tends to behave like ladies have cooties.
Don’t Cease, Girlypop! is a couple of revolution. Its anthemic title observe makes that clear in its earworm hook, but it surely’s baked into the story too. Imber has the facility to topple a megacorporation; she simply has to struggle again in opposition to its grotesque chief, who instructions her to cease resisting at each flip. In a single tune, he even sings it. Late within the recreation, the world darkens and the upbeat title observe will get flipped into the sort of steel tune you’d hear in a Doom recreation. The style conventions regain management as a “Don’t cease, girlypop” chorus mutates into “Cease, cease, girlypop.” It’s nearly as if the style itself is rebelling, terrified that Girlypop would possibly simply welcome extra gamers right into a style that’s lengthy been gatekept.
Even when it doesn’t handle to blow the doorways off the place in each second, it makes one hell of an affect. Possibly 10 years from now, when the participant demographics of the style have reformed amid a wave of shooters that ought to have existed all this time, we’ll look again on Girlypop because the spark of a revolution.
Do not Cease, Girlypop! is out now on Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed on Home windows PC and Steam Deck utilizing a prerelease obtain code offered by Humorous Fintan Softworks. You will discover further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.
